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GREAT PRIDE OUGHT EVERY
SCOT TO have in the village of his birth, and to the auld-farrant, steep-braed
village of Kilbarchan my mind and heart go back whenever I think of the
laird's loft.
The old parish kirk stands
still at the bieldy back of the town, with the graves of gentles and
simples all about it. But it is stripped of all its ancient glory, for a
brand-new house of God has been built but a stone's-throw from it; and as
I look at the kirk of 1724, with its quaint tower, its old ivy-covered
outside stair, and its little-paned windows winking in the sun, I am
minded that this is the true successor of that cell of St. Barchan, Bishop
and Confessor, which Walter Fitz-Alan, High Steward of Scotland, gave to
the Abbey of Paisley in the days which are now hiding ahint a whole gowpen
of centuries.
In this old kirk, with its
ancient pews and galleries, the thing that struck the eye of childhood was
the ken-speckle wooden shields, emblazoned with the arms of the great
families of the district. These shields were hung over the front of the
three galleries, where the local lairds had their seats. I can see them
yet, after all these years, in this and in many another old country parish
kirk in Scotland—the great wide, room-like gallery pew, with table and
chairs all set out in a row, and a little door at the back of the loft
where the Lord of the Lairdship could enter and leave with his family
whenever he liked. To that door at the back of the laird's loft the little
stone iron-railed outside stair led up, and close by the found of the
stone stair in the kirk-yard was the laird's own family vault, so that
when he climbed the stair to his own loft on a Sunday he was aye minded of
man's mortality, and of his own in particular.
For there were many namely
lairds who sat in the lairds' lofts in the old kirk of Kilbarchan: the
Knoxes of Ranfurly, out of whose ancient family came John Knox himself,
the great Reformer of the Kirk, and Andrew Knox, who took the other side,
and became a Bishop of the Isles; the Dundonald family, with the Hamiltons
of Holmhead and Crawfords of Auchinames; Napiers of Milliken, of the old
stock of Napier of Merchiston, famed as landed gentry from the time of
Alexander the Third, and in later days for logarithmic inventions ;
Wallace of Elderslie; Houston of Johnstone; Cunninghame of Craigends—all
the seancient lords and lairds in olden times had their faith confirmed in
Kilbarchan kirk, and hung their escutcheons over the front of their lofts
in the old galleries. To the bairns of a past generation it whiles seemed
unfair that the high folks in the lofts should have these bonny painted
panels all to themselves, for a few of the old armorial shields still
remained. But the laird's loft, like everything old in this ancient land,
was but the grand consummation of what had taken centuries to grow out of
a very modest beginning.
It began with that gleg
quean Jenny Geddes, who so long ago sat on a wee bit folding-stool in the
cathedral kirk of St. Giles and listened in wrath to the voice of Dean
Hanna. When he came to the reading of the ritual, Jenny rose, seized her
stool, and sent it birling through the dim-lighted kirk straight for the
Dean, with this cry of protest that roused auld Scotland into holy wrath
for generations to come:
"Ye'll no' say Mass in my
lug!"
The laird's loft, with its
tables and chairs and painted arms, had its laigh beginning in that same
stool of Jenny Geddes.
For before that time men
and women who went to worship in the cathedrals or kirks had to stand
during service. There was neither seat nor stool. The whole space of the
area was free to the parish folk in general.
But human nature aye rules
the roost. So with the ongoing of time, the forritsome folk, like the gleg
quean, grew tired with standing on the flags or the earthen floor, and
carried in little stools for themselves, which they took away again when
the kirk had scaled. Then some inventive body brought in a wooden form one
Sabbath day, and set it in a place of conveniency for his wife and bairns
to sit on. The form was left in the kirk; others were carried in, and
those who brought them soon acquired a prescriptive right to both the
forms and the place. Still, there was no closing-in of these seats for
many a year. So the congregation was made up of some who stood and some
who sat, and the whole clanjamfrey of the parish worshipped together in
this mixty-maxty style for a generation.
Then the wheelwright, whose
form was near the door, put up a screen of boards and shutters to shield
his wife and bairns, for by himself, from the draught in winter-time. The
comfort of the thing was smittal, and one after another erected screens
about their forms, until the whole area of the parish kirk was covered
with shuttered seats.
By this time every family
had grown into its own right of sitting space, and it was an ill thing to
move a man's form from the pulpit side after it had been standing there
for a generation. Least of all would the laird thole his handsome form
with the high screens to be moved. So, when a family left the parish for
another place, the family form was given up to a favoured neighbour for a
consideration, in lieu of the expense put out on the screening of it from
draughts. So, bit by bit, the seat in the kirk became both a lettable and
a vendible property.
But, at long last, there
was an outcry for a something to bring this higglety-pigglety kind of
sitting commode to an end. Then, indeed, there was many an argy-bargy
about expense, and right, and old custom, when it came to the matter of
reseating the kirk. The Heritors and Corporation of many an old burgh town
adjudged it a hard thing that they should pay for the improving of what
was plainly other folks' private property. Then that worthy man the
Provost proposed that the Corporation should undertake the repair
entirely, and that each proprietor should pay eighteen-pence a body-room
each year to the Town Council for the whole. This the lairds and the great
folk were but too glad to do, and so be saved the expense of gutting and
plenishing the whole kirk. From that time on, many a kirk that was a
disgrace for dirt and disorder was seated after a proper plan—the laird
choosing his own pew, and furnishing it with comfort according to the
length of his own purse.
So the laird's loft, as the
private gallery of the chief heritor was soon called, became a regular
feature of
every old eighteenth-century kirk, and the escutcheon of many a noble
family hung over the gallery face, painted on a board, like Jacob's coat,
in many colours.
It is not for me to tell of
all the ongoings in the laird's loft when the bairns of my lady grew tired
of sitting in the hard chairs down in front, or the servant-maids and
flunkeys misbehaved in the common seats behind. But there was aye the
little door at the back and the outside stair for them that misbehaved.
The old minister, with his
black gown and white bands and his long-fingered black gloves, would bow
to the laird's loft when he entered the plain wood pulpit, thus
forgetting, I sorely misdoubt, that in the sanctuary all are one before a
common Father. And I have heard with my own ears in olden days an aged
minister make weekly supplication in the parish kirk by a lochside for
"the family in authority in this district," while he kept a most
circumspect eye during the service on the laird's loft, where my lady sat
above the shield of arms.
But that is all by now, and
in our parish kirk restored it would be hard for a stranger to tell the
laird's pew from the cadger's.
And as we leave the old
kirk of Kilbarchan and walk down the quaint streets where the weavers can
still be seen sitting in-by at their hand-looms making clinkamclank music
on the hot afternoons, we give Habbie Simpson a look in the bygoing
playing his pipes up yonder on the steeple at the cross; for with the
passing of the laird's loft and the old families, the hand-loom weaver and
the very twang of every habbie's tongue will soon be gone as well. |
